Youness Aharoiz’s Story

by Youness Aharoiz.August 14, 2018

When i came to Canada in 2011 with my wife and my only son who was 2 years, we did not have any friends or relatives. our situation was critical because we spoke only Arabic and French and language barrier was a real obstacle.After two months my only son had the first seizures without fever and at that time we did not know how to do in case of emergency except I remember that I saw a notice in the appartment that 911 is a an emergency number. I called 911 but I described my son situation in French I said ” convulsions” instead of ” Seizures ” but the operator tried to talk to me and she asked me about my address hopefully the pronunciation of address in english is the same as ” adresse” in French. I gave the operator my address that I hopefully could say it in English. The ambulance came took my son to the hospital where he received anti seizure drug before went back home the next day. We taught that my son seizures will establish but we did know that was the beginning of a repetitive long journey of hospitalization. Seizures started again and most of anti seizure drugs did not control it.Me and my wife left language for newcomers program to take care of our son. It was winter when we started to commute from south side to the university Hospital using ambulance and backing up on the bus hoping for recovery or at least reduce my son suffering. After 18 months he started a high dosage of medications with taking risk of its side effect on the liver .After two years, we started to settle down in Edmonton after my son ‘seizures started to be under control. We slowly started to integrate and know people around us after I decided to go to school to learn English on Daytime and my wife at night to have someone take care of our son .